1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an animation drawing apparatus for producing animated pictures on a monitor screen of a television receiver or the like.
2. Description of the Prior Art
There has been known heretofore an animation image constructing system contrived to produce animated pictures on a monitor screen of a television receiver. Such animation drawing system includes an apparatus equipped with a tablet and key groups, wherein a plurality of characters of the same size (e.g., 16.times.16 dots) are displayed on a CRT (cathode-ray tube) screen of a monitor, and when a desired one of such characters is selected by depression of a select key or the like by a user, a cursor indicates the selected character. In case the desired character is not existent in any of the characters displayed on the monitor screen, some more characters are displayed on the monitor screen by the user, and then the desired character can be selected out of such newly displayed characters by depression of the select key. Furthermore the color of the selected character is also selectable by a color select key or the like so that the character color is rendered changeable on the screen.
And when the user designates a desired cursor position on the monitor screen by means of an exclusive pen on the tablet corresponding to the monitor screen, the cursor is shifted to the desired position on the monitor screen. And if a position set key is depressed in this stage, the character indicated by the cursor can be defined at such desired position.
The pictures produced by repeating the above operation can be scrolled on the screen by depressing a scroll key. It is possible to designate the scroll direction to be upward or downward by the scroll key so that the entire pictures thus obtained are scrolled in the same direction.
In the conventional animation drawing system, a group of some characters are sequentially displayed on the monitor screen, and a desired character selected out of the displayed character group is indicated by a cursor. And after designation of the cursor position by the tablet, the cursor-indicated character is defined at the designated position so that a picture is produced on the monitor screen, and subsequently the entire pictures are scrolled upward or downward by depressing the scroll key.
Thus, as obvious from the above, the operation is so performed in the conventional animation drawing apparatus that the entire pictures are merely scrolled upward or downward to consequently bring about some disadvantages including insufficiency of visual expression, effect and pleasure.